sed me. But on the morrow,
for all that, my heroism cost me a good many remorseful pangs; I was
afraid the affair of the Memoirs, now of such importance for me, might
have fallen through, and rushed off to Rastignac. We found the nominal
author of my future labors just getting up.

"Finot read over a brief agreement to me, in which nothing whatever was
said about my aunt, and when it had been signed he paid me down fifty
crowns, and the three of us breakfasted together. I had only thirty
francs left over, when I had paid for my new hat, for sixty tickets at
thirty sous each, and settled my debts; but for some days to come the
difficulties of living were removed. If I had but listened to Rastignac,
I might have had abundance by frankly adopting the 'English system.' He
really wanted to establish my credit by setting me to raise loans, on
the theory that borrowing is the basis of credit. To hear him talk, the
future was the largest and most secure kind of capital in the world.
My future luck was hypothecated for the benefit of my creditors, and he
gave my custom to his tailor, an artist, and a young man's tailor, who
was to leave me in peace until I married.

"The monastic life of study that I had led for three years past ended
on this day. I frequented Foedora's house very diligently, and tried to
outshine the heroes or the swaggerers to be found in her circle. When
I believed that I had left poverty for ever behind me, I regained my
freedom of mind, humiliated my rivals, and was looked upon as a very
attractive, dazzling, and irresistible sort of man. But acute folk used
to say with regard to me, 'A fellow as clever as that will keep all his
enthusiasms in his brain,' and charitably extolled my faculties at
the expense of my feelings. 'Isn't he lucky, not to be in love!' they
exclaimed. 'If he were, could he be so light-hearted and animated?' Yet
in Foedora's presence I was as dull as love could make me. When I was
alone with her, I had not a word to say, or if I did speak, I renounced
love; and I affected gaiety but ill, like a courtier who has a bitter
mortification to hide. I tried in every way to make myself indispensable
in her life, and necessary to her vanity and to her comfort; I was a
plaything at her pleasure, a slave always at her side. And when I had
frittered away the day in this way, I went back to my work at night,
securing merely two or three hours' sleep in the early morning.

"But I had not, like Ras